"Angels and Demons"

Physics Professor Explains Science Behind "Angles and Demons"

This May, Sony Pictures will release "Angels and Demons," an action-packed thriller based on Dan Brown's best-selling novel that focuses on an apparent plot to destroy the Vatican using a small amount of antimatter made using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The physics at the heart of "Angels and Demons" calls attention to what happens when matter and antimatter meet. The absence of practically any antimatter in the universe is crucial to our existence, and to understand that absence is one of the big challenges of particle physics.

At 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 6 in Porter Hall 100, Associate Professor of Physics Manfred Paulini will discuss science facts and fiction in "Angels and Demons," the mystery of the missing antimatter and how future particle physics experiments will explore some of the secrets of the universe. Paulini is an experimental particle physicist who also conducts research at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, and Fermilab in Chicago.